Events organised by the deutsche Chirurgiestiftung 2020

Parliamentary evening on quality assurance of court reports in family and criminal law on 5 March 2020 in Berlin

More than 70 representatives from politics, science and practice accepted the invitation of the Competence Centre for Expert Opinions and the Legal Psychology Section of the Professional Association of German Psychologists (BDP) to the parliamentary evening "Quality assurance of court expert opinions" on 5 March at the German Parliamentary Society in Berlin.

The Parliamentary State Secretary at the Federal Ministry of Justice and Consumer Protection (BMJV), Christian Lange, explained: "Today, the justice system relies on the expertise and specialist knowledge of experts in numerous areas. Precisely because the professional title of "expert" is not protected and anyone with suitable training can call themselves an expert, the issue of quality assurance in expert assessments is of paramount importance." "Improving and safeguarding the quality of court proceedings is an important issue, because this is about the function of the judiciary and the trust of citizens in the rule of law," said Katja Keul, member of the Bundestag and patron of the evening, from Bündnis 90/Die Grünen. Among other things, two important projects were discussed. In September last year, the working group on family law expert reports published a revised edition of the "Minimum requirements for expert reports in child custody law". This includes, in particular, additions on the subject of orders to take evidence and on expert opinions with the aim of reaching an agreement. This time, the state ministries of justice, the Federal Court of Justice and socio-educational associations were also involved in the process of revising the minimum requirements. This means that the revised edition is based on an even broader consensus. "The high level of interest and lively participation once again shows the enormous importance of this topic," says Prof Dr Anja Kannegießer, one of the hosts of the evening. "Evenings like this promote the all-important interdisciplinary dialogue in order to find further approaches to quality assurance." Another focus of the evening was the pilot project "Peer Review Procedure for Expert Opinions in Child Cases", which is funded by the Federal Ministry of Justice and Consumer Protection and the German Surgery Foundation. This project is testing whether and to what extent the peer review procedure known from the field of scientific publications can be transferred to the expert witness system as a system of anonymous, collegial feedback. "We have not yet reached the end of our quality assurance journey. There are still many challenges that need to be overcome. Specific information and training for all those involved in the process are necessary," says Kannegießer.

• Programm Parlamentarischer Abend Berlin 2020